Toy Boeing Stearman Kaydet Bi-Plane #6: Cut out the Main Wings

I laid out the wings on 10 1/4” x 4” x 24” pieces of poplar (after replacing the one I’d used earlier by mistake). Here’s a picture of the lower wing outline along with a vertical tail piece outline, showing that they easily fit on one of the work pieces.

You can also see the notch that I added to the vertical tail template.

I laid out both the top and bottom wings. Since my plan calls for a 3-1/8” width on the wings, I decided to rip the 10 pieces using my table saw rather than cutting that with the band saw (which is how I’d done it on the first one I made). That made the cuts go a lot faster on the band saw since all I had to do was the rough curved cuts.

I have a Freud LU88 R010 60T Thin Kerf Blade on my table saw and it really does a nice job. I love the blade. I will do a bit of final, fine grit sanding on the piece but I just took the width of the wings one pencil mark width from the final size.

Note: these pictures and steps are slightly out of order – you can see the landing gear in this pic below but I haven’t described the landing gear yet.

The cut out on the top wing was roughed out on the band saw. My Ridgid oscillating spindle / belt sander’s drive drum on the belt is the exact size I needed to smooth out the curved portion of the cut out. I then ran the piece along the same drum using my fingers as a fence to finish off the rest of the cut out. It worked pretty good, much better than hand sanding. Here’s a picture of all 5 of the top wings stacked up::

After all of the wings were cut out and shaped, I drilled the holes for the wing struts.

I used my templates to set up the drill press for one hole at a time. For each hole, once the drill press was set up, I could drill the holes in all five similar pieces and then set up for the next hole. That process worked out great and I’m really thankful for my drill press table.